FOLLOWING FUNDY
New Brunswick’s Fundy Footpath traverses some of Atlantic Canada’s last coastal wilderness, but increasing tourism and other development is always close at hand. How does the footpath find its balance?
New Brunswick’s Fundy Footpath traverses some of Atlantic Canada’s last coastal wilderness, but increasing tourism and other development is always close at hand. How does the footpath find its balance?
NICK BRENNAN LEANS over a dog-eared topographical map of New Brunswick’s Fundy coast, running chestnut-tanned fingers along its jagged shoreline. Ink has been rubbed to bare paper, occasionally to holes, around campsites east of St. Martins, N.B., where Brennan’s wilderness outfitting company is based. This weekend I’ll be tackling a third of the Fundy Footpath, one of the country’s hardest backcountry trails, from Little Salmon River, about 20 kilometres west of Fundy National Park, to Big Salmon River, another 20 kilometres farther west. It’s the easiest segment, and I’m hiking it in the easiest direction, but Brennan still seems concerned.
“You have to understand what this is,” he says. “It’s a single-track trail with exposed roots, not level, slippery when wet, with extreme elevation climbs and descents. And then you add tides into that mix.”
It’s on the New Brunswick side of this enormous tidal basin, along steep, south-facing cliffs, where a 60-kilometre segment of The Great Trail wends and climbs through some of its most challenging terrain. Comprising some of the last pristine coastal wilderness in Atlantic Canada, the stretch is an amalgam of three separate yet intertwined trail systems. To the west is the Fundy Trail Parkway, accessible by car and open to day-trippers and cyclists, a curving snake of pavement slicing through thick forest. To the east is the Fundy National Park trail, which features a well-maintained spider’s web of paths and trails and modern park amenities including signage, bathrooms and onsite interpreters. I will be trekking the volunteer-built Fundy Footpath — a narrow, remote, root-and-rock-strewn trail recommended for only the mostprepared hikers — that links the two.
Trail builders, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, First Nations groups and locals often carry competing visions for this area. Whether it’s slated for development, protected by government or managed by teams of volunteers, determining who can enjoy and access this landscape has long been, and will remain, a fine balance. And yet, stuffing gear into my backpack, my first concern is whether or not I’m equal to even this short section of the footpath.
IT’S THE BEAUTY and potential of St. Martins, at the western end of the coastal trail, that drew Brennan here, and where he and friend Mike Carpenter, an experienced sea kayaker, started Red Rock Adventure in 2012. They run kayaking and boat tours along the winding coast’s tide-carved caves and remote beaches, and offer guiding services and educational and therapeutic overnight trips in New Brunswick’s wildest corners. Over the past few years, they’ve seen tourism explode, visitors drawn to the area partially by the Fundy Footpath. “People are hungry to go to untouched places. That’s the direction the global tourism industry is going in,” says Brennan. “And we live in a province where there’s more wilderness than people.” Long a territory travelled, harvested and fished by the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq First Nations, this coastline was a centre of the 18th- and 19th-century colonial shipbuilding trade. The pines here grow straight and strong, and make ideal masts for sailing ships; at one point, nearly every river or creek running to the ocean in this area was dammed for logging. This brought prosperity to St. Martins and other towns, but also devastated them when shipbuilding collapsed in the early 1900s. By 2020, a brand-new paved Fundy Trail Parkway, which some call “the new Cabot Trail,” will run parallel to the Fundy coastal trails, linking St. Martins and Alma, at the easternmost point of the national park. Right now, the only straight route between the two is by backcountry hike. St. Martins gets about 70,000 tourists annually, says Brennan, compared with Alma’s annual draw of around 300,000; a through road will transform this town from a detour to a destination. While tourists are increasingly
ACCESS TO THIS landscape HAS LONG BEEN a fine balance.
flocking to the footpath, it’s still a remote wilderness trail with all the inherent dangers: “I’ve pulled all sorts of people out of these woods,” he says. Starting our hike in the mid-afternoon, Brennan’s truck roars toward a forest service road providing mid-trail access on this 2½-day hike. Driving past sweeping clear-cuts, peppered with stripped, sad skeletons of jack pines and spruce trees, it’s hard to believe we’re heading toward dense, intact Acadian forest. He offers an apple from a nearly empty fivekilogram bag stashed beside the driver’s chair as his aging Brittany spaniel, who ordinarily rides shotgun, crouches resentfully in the back seat. The truck leaves a plume of dust, eventually stopping at a 2½-kilometre ridgeline access trail leading to two campsites near the mouth of Little Salmon River. After tightening packs and adjusting hiking poles, we set off. Given the trail’s steep, root-strewn terrain and the pace required to finish the trail in four days, a frequent piece of advice is “pack light.” That means carrying dehydrated food, light tents and sleeping bags, and as few frills as possible. Luckily, as long as hikers have water filtration, the path’s many streams and brooks provide consistent opportunities to refill bottles and bladders. As soon as we arrive at our campsite and before we lose the sun, we walk upriver to fill a 10-litre water filtration bladder with fresh-running water. Taking off my sturdy boots and sweaty hiking clothes, I dive into one of the river’s deep pools. A stiff breeze blows up the valley, carrying a whiff of ocean brine. Sitting in shallow water, I run a rainbow of rocks through my fingers and watch them drift to the bottom. The silence is profound, cut only by the pounding of a single helicopter, which careens overhead and quickly vanishes beyond the treeline. An eagle follows a few minutes later. As it nears dark, three hikers cross the river heading west from Goose River, 23 kilometres along the footpath from the east. They all wear long pants and carry a pole in each hand. The lead hiker waves back while another snaps a photo. They disappear into the forest, a whale-shaped crest of emerald against a robin’s-egg-blue sky. The sun sets high against the
valley’s ridge, the temperature plummets, and I retreat to my tent.
THE MORNING arrives with the small roar of insect wings. Following the Appalachian Trail standard, white blazes track this winding footpath. Inconveniently, the bark of many trees in this area also carry a look-alike white fungus, so hikers are warned to pay close attention.
“Most of the time, if you get lost on the trail, you’ve been talking or daydreaming, and, poof, you forget where you are,” says Alonzo Leger, who, along with his brother Gilles, started building the footpath with a team of volunteers in the early 1990s. Although park ranger Jack Mckay blazed a gruelling straight-up-and-down trail along the coast in the 1980s, it had fallen into disuse by the time the Leger brothers started their work.
Building switchbacks and cutting trails along perilous 200-metre-high ravines was difficult and painstaking, says Alonzo Leger, but with support from other volunteer trail builders across the province, including veterans of the Moncton-area Dobson Trail, the eastern section of the Fundy Footpath was completed in 1994. The western section — the part we’re hiking — was finished four years later. From securing land permissions from private landowners to the thousands of volunteer hours spent building the trail, he’s still amazed they actually did it.
These days, Leger says some of the footpath’s veteran hikers are annoyed by the amount and scale of development invested in the western, driveable parkway side of the trail, money they say would be better spent maintaining and improving the central footpath’s aging stair ladders and signage. Another challenge, he says, is that all three sections bear the “Fundy” name, which often confuses tourists looking for day hikes or bike trails. “We get people who want to cycle it, and I have to say, ‘No, it’s a footpath,’” Leger says. “You’d be carrying your bike most of the time.”
Passing through the sheltered inlet of Cradle Brook, we eat a leisurely, sunshine-drenched lunch of rehydrated food on the rocky beach, a pleasant change from the forest’s thick, shady canopy. It’s gorgeous on a calm day, but easy to see how a storm and high tide could pin unlucky hikers between ocean and dense shrubbery. Ascending the valley wall, the cable ladder is rotting and rickety, and quavers under our feet. We breathe a sigh of relief when back on solid ground, but our eyes widen at the steep trail winding upward.
When emergencies happen on the footpath, one person likely to get a call is Larry Adair, owner of Adair’s Wilderness Lodge. He has a thick white beard and often wears a khaki shirt and glasses, giving him a Santa-claus-on-summervacation vibe. He purchased this land, about 15 kilometres north of the Little Salmon River trailhead, in 1990 and built the lodge and restaurant in 1997. Cabins, motel units and a banquet room — featuring a painted mural in which Alonzo Leger appears — followed soon after. While Leger and other volunteers worked on the Fundy Footpath, Adair let them camp on his land for free.
“Before I opened this area, hardly anyone toured it,” says Adair. Catering to ATV riders and motorcyclists, as well as hunters in the fall and hikers in the summer, the lodge hosts groups of snowmobilers and cross-country skiers in the winter. Adair, a longtime member of the Fundy Trail Parkway board, says the area will be the province’s “number one tourism destination” when the connecting road is eventually finished. “If I can get everything rolling, in five years you’ll see at least a 100-room hotel in here, motel, pool and spa,” he says.
It’s important that all types of visitors, from adrenaline junkies to easygoing daytrippers, are able to find activities and services they’re comfortable with, says Adair. There’s room in Fundy National Park for everyone, he says, and Brennan agrees. “Making sure everyone gets along,
‘PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY TO GO TO untouched places.'
that’s a constant balancing act,” says Brennan. “But it’s remarkable that we all have access to this trail, even across private and public land. It’s magic.”
NEARING THE END of a second, gruelling day on the footpath, my knees and feet feel the opposite of magic, but the sudden discovery of hundreds of wild trailside blueberries is still thrilling. I awkwardly stoop to pick some, filling my palms before moving on, and minutes later, the brand-new wooden guardrails of a road under construction emerge beside the trail. A wide, snaking asphalt path runs back toward where we’ve just walked, step after heavy, tired step. It’s jarring to see smooth, fresh road after days of uneven single-track path. When we trudge into Long Beach, a serene arcing bay at low tide, we’re greeted by a brand-new facility containing washrooms, freshly plumbed showers and — even — croquet mallet rentals. A half-dozen cars pepper a freshly paved parking lot. A white-haired man in khakis crouches on a log, staring out at the ocean. A family stands around a black SUV, doors open, music playing. “Debbie, pass my water bottle,” the female driver shouts. “Debbie!” After miles of silent forest, it is a cacophony, and so distracting we accidentally hike a kilometre past the area’s new campsites, the originals displaced by brand-new picnic shelters. It’s too late to continue to Big Salmon, where our car is parked, so our night will be spent here. Dark clouds threaten as we rush to pitch our tents on a sheltered plateau overlooking the beach. Growing up cutting trails with his father Alonzo, 37-year-old Marc Leger never anticipated working in this wilderness as an adult. But now, managing a trail revitalization project for Fundy National Park, he says a childhood spent in this forest has come in handy. The “worst part” of the Fundy Footpath used to finish in the park, he says, which is one reason they recently hired a worldrenowned sustainable trail building consultant to reroute the segment of the coastal trail from Goose River, at the park’s western border. With grey-flecked hair, long limbs and a beard, Leger wears glasses and a green Parks Canada jacket and matching collared shirt. A former employee of The Great Trail — back when it was still the Trans Canada Trail — he currently sits on the board of the Fundy Hiking Trails Association and volunteers on the footpath. When The Great Trail was still in the planning stages, he says, this park was one of the first groups on board; it is still only one of a handful of national parks represented along the path. Striking a balance between longtime hikers and mountain bikers and Canadians new to exploring the country’s wilderness, including day-trippers more comfortable in cars than in hiking boots, is one of his organization’s goals, says Leger. “We have our coastal trails, and we have trails you can drive. We have trails that you can walk, trails you can walk and bike,” he says, pointing to a bank of new, under-construction trail. “This goes through the exact same terrain, but will be more accessible. ‘Fundy Footpath light’ would be a good way to put it.” As the afternoon light dims, the park empties out, with one family arriving a half-hour before the 8 p.m. day-visiting closing time. Two older women in colourful saris take the stairs carefully down to the beach, bright fabric whipping in the wind. When they drive away, we are alone again, now surrounded by empty infrastructure. Sitting at a newwood-smelling picnic bench at Long Beach, it’s possible to see the allure of the footpath — not simply in making stretches of it more accessible, but in bringing more lucky people closer to Fundy’s fairy-tale beaches, its confounding cliffs; who wouldn’t want to rub up against this beauty and solitude?
‘IT’S REMARKABLE WE ALL HAVE a e to this trail. It's magic.'